Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today announced that Israel's tunnel operation is almost complete and by tomorrow, all known tunnels will have been destroyed. It is pulling back some troops from Gaza, but Netanyahu made it clear Israel is not ending its ground war. He said Hamas will have a heavy price to pay if it continues to attack Israel. More from his announcement:

“Every option is on the table to ensure long-term quiet to the residents of Israel,” he said. “I won’t say when we’ll finish and where we’ll go. We have no obligation outside of our security concerns.”

guy being captured worked for long enough to get everyone from Obama on down to bite down and swallow it whole, and thereby act as the pretext the Israelis needed to continue doing what they wanted to do until such time as they decided they wanted to stop.

that the three soldiers killed were killed when someone wearing a bomb blew himself up near them, and that the power of the bomb was such that there was nothing left recognizable as human remains of the lieutenant, at least in the context of a quick search of the battlefield. Battlefields ordinarily do not lend themselves to the CSI treatment and there is no indication how much or little of his remains were ultimately found. Moreover, there is no indication of how much or little rubble was left, nor whether it was moved to find whatever it was that they found.

Stuff like this is why soldiers habitually wear multiple sets of dogtags in different places - around their neck, tied to their bootlaces and stuffed inside their boots, etc.